Ricki Lewis

Summer reading for most people means magazines, novels, and similar escapist fare, but for me, it’s the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG). Perusing the table of contents of the current issue tells me what’s dominating this post-genomic era: information beyond the obvious, like a subtext hidden within the sequences of A,  Read More 

Body-Altering Mutations – In Children and Flies

I became a science writer, circa 1980, because I didn’t think flies with legs growing out of their heads – my PhD research – had much to do with human health. So when I spied “A Human Homeotic Transformation” way down on the Table of Contents in the May issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, I was as riveted as a normal person would be getting a copy of People with a celebrity on the cover. Read More 

As a genetic counselor, I hate telling a woman over 35 that she’s of “advanced maternal age,” which raises the risk of conceiving a child who has an extra chromosome. Now older men are in the reproductive spotlight too.

Since the nineteenth century, physicians have noted that Down syndrome babies tend to be the  Read More